January | 2019 | jenjsilver

Why use a prologue when starting to tell a story? Obviously it’s used mainly so the author can introduce readers to something that happens before the start of the story…maybe some background details, setting up a foreshadowing of future events, a pointer or two.

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One of the hardest things to decide when writing a novel is where to begin. Usually I like to get stuck straight in to the action. Of my eight novels published so far, I’ve only used a prologue twice.

Carved in Stone was the third book of the Starling Hill Trilogy and the beta readers thought a recap was needed as it was released eight months after the second book. But was a prologue strictly necessary? For readers who had read the first two books (and have good memories), it probably seemed like a tedious information dump that they could skip. (I did try to keep it as short as possible.)

In Running From Love, I used the prologue to introduce the two main characters …one who wants a divorce and the other who isn’t happy about it. I thought this was needed to give readers an early insight into the parting couple’s relationship. Then in part one, I take the reader back six months to show why they are getting a divorce. (An author’s prerogative…messing with timelines!)

I didn’t have a prologue in mind when I started writing Deuce (my next novel, due out on 1 February). But the character, Charlotte, only appears in person in the second part of the story and I thought readers might need some clue that this was going to happen…and why. Also Charlotte has a first person point of view, whereas all the other characters with a POV are third person. (Another author’s prerogative…messing with narrative points of view!)

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So, after the book’s release, it will be an anxious wait to see what readers think…not only about the prologue…but also about the shifts from third to first person in the second part of the story.

And then there’s the question of epilogues…a topic for another blog.

Happy reading!

Check out my books page for descriptions and links.

A statue of Kópakonan—the seal wife— stands on the shore at Mikladalur, a village on the island of Kalsoy. She features in a well-known folktale from the Faroe Islands and like most of the selkie legends it is a romantic tragedy.

This may seem like an unlikely starting point for a contemporary romance. But it fit with several of the threads in my new novel, Deuce, which is being released by Affinity Rainbow Publications on Friday 1 February.

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As with some of my other books, I started writing about the two main characters a long time ago. I enjoyed watching women’s tennis back in the late eighties, early nineties, before all the grunting started. And I had in my mind to write a story about a successful female British tennis player.

Of course, it was total fantasy. And I didn’t think anyone was ever going to read this story, writing purely for my own pleasure. My sexy, butch lesbian tennis player, Jay Reid, won the 1988 Wimbledon Women’s final. (No, she didn’t. I know very well who did win in real life. But it fulfilled my desire to see a British player hit the heights of the tennis world.)

Although Jay’s sexual preferences were fairly obvious, the fact that she had a long-term girlfriend was a well-kept secret. Charlotte, a marine biologist, kept a low profile, while Jay started to make her way up the tennis rankings. When Charlotte disappeared during a research trip surveying the fate of the grey seal population in the North Sea, Jay’s world fell apart.

That was as far as the story went. Bringing it into the present meant finding out what happened. How did Jay handle losing the love of her life? When I started writing the story again, Jay’s wedding to Amanda is only a few weeks away, a child Charley left behind is grown up…and (not a spoiler – as this is mentioned in the blurb and the prologue) Charlotte isn’t dead. She has been living on one of the Faroe Islands, with no memory of her previous life.

Back of the Book description:

When Jay Reid was in her twenties, she had it all. A professional tennis career, Charlotte, the love of her life and a new baby. It ended far too soon when Charlotte’s research vessel, RV Caspian, was lost at sea, leaving Jay to raise their child alone.

But Charlotte was, in fact, the sole survivor of the RV Caspian. Rescued by a local fisherman, with no memory of her life before, she lives on the Faroe Islands as Katrin Nielsen. Seeing a beached seal one day triggers her memory and slowly her other identity comes back to her. She returns to England to try to reclaim her life with Jay and their child.

Twenty-three years is a long time. Is the love they once shared strong enough to be rekindled or have too many years passed eroding all hope of a happy ever after?

Deuce is my ninth published novel. I’m working on number ten. In the meantime, if you’re still in the mood for a Christmas story, novel number five, Christmas at Winterbourne is still available on Kindle Unlimited until the end of February.

Happy reading!

Books by Jen Silver…available from Affinity Rainbow Publications, Amazon, Bella Books, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Apple iTunes

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